thegreekdog wrote: You've ignored that religion was created by man (assuming, of course, you don't believe in the divine) and has been used by man to justify a whole host of things, whether good or evil. I'm not sure how you can dispute this in a successful way. Most assuredly, religion has been a successful tool (tool being the operative word) to repress a lot of stuff over the years. Similarly, patriotism and nationalism and racism have been successful tools (again, tool being the operative word). Without those tools, people would have come up with something else (and have!).
But does it really matter, for this point, whether religion is true or not? I think you and I would each agree that a LOT of what is put forward as Christianity has little to do with what each of us believe Christ actually said or even that our respective churces put forward. (and there are points on which we certainly disagree with each other).
The point is that people in power want to maintain power.. and while there are always some who truly are trying to "do what's best for all", there are many others who just care about what is best for themselves, or (more to the point) wind up convincing themselves that what is best for them is best for all.
That is (as you noted) true, whether it is religion or politics or any other firm belief. In many cases, this idea of the free market versus socialism enters into this realm. In EACH of these cases, there is legitimate debates and arguments. Each has some "good", but each gets distorted in the extreme.
AAFitz wrote:The fact that other factors could have and did also affect science, in no way whatsoever, removes the fact that religion was indeed responsible for holding science back. Maybe without religious beliefs, its possible the populace would have allowed science to still be held back, but to say there is a force as strong as the belief in a supernatural creator that will punish the entire world for doing so, and can be made up to fit whatever situation needed, is simply a stretch of the imagination. If you eliminate the religious beliefs out of the equation, the very reason to hold back the science that was held back, is almost impossible to imagine.Your argument is simply based on a hypothesis that without religion and religious beliefs the science would have been held back for some other reason. Its a valid one, but in no way supported by actual history
AA you are arguing as an atheist who wants to pain religion as the "ultimate evil", not based on historical fact. Or, to put it another way, you are committing the same error of which you accuse religious individuals.
Religion is no more binding than any other train of thought, including atheism. As I have pointed out before, there are many, MANY answers for which science has no answer. The whole idea of limiting our thinking to just that which is known and proven has caused as much harm as the limitations on science at times. I would argue that medical, nutritional research were each hampered by the belief that "modern western thinking" was automatically superior to that of indigenouse peoples. In many cases, while they arrived at their truth in different ways (ways we might at times now call false), they still arrived at truth. You can say.. well, sure, but they were wrong in their approach. Except, that has been often true of science as well.
ANY limitation of thinking is harmful.
I would further argue (repeat my argument) that it was not so much that religion itself limited scientific thought, rather that the way religion expressed itself and was used was one factor of the culture of the time. It was various conditions of the time... response to wars, plagues, a shift in economic system from hunter gather or small holdings to largere estates, etc along with (as greekdog keeps repeating) the innate desire of those in power to maintain power that lead to the repressive system.
Also, many argue that the "Dark Ages" and Middle Ages were not actually as repressive as history textbooks have sometimes claimed. A LOT was going on "behind closed doors". It is not so much that science was not happening, it was that science as we know it was not yet created. It required a serious foundation, a dismissal of various other approaches (alchemy, etc) before what we call "real science" could emerge. A lot of those foundations actually happened within the monasteries.
thegreekdog wrote: Oh stop it. It's not a stretch of the imagination at all! It goes on today all the time. Science is held back for a whole lot of reasons - money and politics being two.
I would argue it is always "politics" because "politics" is just what we label all these disagreements. Everyone who has these disagreements will look to various reasons to logically disagree.. be it money, religion or other types of beliefs. Ultimately, you always have a mix of a few who are legitimate "believers" in whatever idea, and many (often sitting behind the "true believers") who really just want power. They each, in turn tend to be behind the "speakers"/communincators who are the politicians. It was more than a joke when Reagan was in office, but the truth is that few politicians really and truly come up with their own ideas...even when they believe they are doing so. Instead, they are fostered and coached by various other power entities.
AAFitz wrote:Personally, I think you just dont like the idea of it for religious reasons, and are simply making an argument in attempt to further clear religion from wrongdoing, in essence, you are doing exactly what has been done throughout history. I fully believe without the bias of religious beliefs, you simply would not. The history is quite clear, but you are stretching to argue away, what actually happened, and your main evidence, is that its possible it would have happened anyways.
I gotta side with greekdog here. I would say that you are launching into what has become a popular modern line of thinking.. that religion is to blame for many ills. It certainly can be, but so can any thought of human beings. It is the nature of being human, not a problem with the various respective belief systems or ideologies.
In any endeavor, you have the "surface reason", the "reason people believe in" and the "real reason". Only rarely do they all cooincide. When they do, too often it is the sign of fanaticism, not anything really good.
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